Some states reconsider term limits

Wisdom of elders needed in office, legislators argue

SALEM, Ore. — Oregon, which has been in the forefront of many national trends, was among the first of 19 states that jumped on the term-limits bandwagon.

But now Oregonians are contemplating a possible countermovement: This year they are likely to vote on whether to become the first state to loosen or even repeal the time limits voters imposed on state legislators' terms.

With 13 of Oregon's 30 state senators prevented by the term-limits law from running for re-election next year, the state Senate has passed a measure that would ask voters on November's ballot whether to abolish the law.

The House is debating that bill and has approved a separate measure to ask voters whether to loosen the limits.

While Oregon's lawmakers seem to be further along in trying to undo term limits than other states', they are hardly alone.

In at least 10 of the 19 states with term limits, legislatures are considering proposals to modify or repeal the laws. Some of those proposals, including one in Missouri, are pending. Others are stalled, in part because of vigorous lobbying by the groups that promoted the term-limits laws.

Momentum built in late '80s

The term-limits movement gained strength in the late 1980s amid the public's frustration with career politicians. But in Oregon, where there have been five House speakers in the last five legislative sessions, many lawmakers, including some newly elected ones who arguably owe their jobs to term limits, are frank in explaining why they oppose the laws.

"I think regular people would be alarmed if they really knew how much influence lobbyists now have over this system," said Democratic state Rep. Mark Hass, a freshman.

"When you need advice," Hass said, "it would be nice to be able to turn to a legislator with 20 years experience, someone who could take a new guy like me under his or her wing and say, `We tried that back in '73, and it didn't work.' There aren't any legislative elders anymore. There's a lot of reinventing the wheel."

In Maine, where a referendum limiting state lawmakers to four consecutive two-year terms was approved in 1993, many legislators have been questioning the effect of the law.

"If term limits get rid of the dead wood, the problem is they get rid of the live wood, too," said Democratic state Sen. Beverly Daggett, her party's leader. "When you go anywhere else--to the heart surgeon or the mechanic--you don't ask for the person who was just hired today."

Whether voters will warm to the idea of undoing term limits is a different matter. Several experts said that while the fierce support for term limits has clearly waned in recent years, that does not necessarily mean people are in favor of repealing them.

Arkansas effort fails

In Arkansas, a proposal to lengthen the time state lawmakers could serve died recently in the Legislature after a term-limits group ran radio ads mocking a fictional lawmaker pleading for the extension.

"Well, it's just not long enough for us to get comfortable around here," the lawmaker drawled. "We need to stay in office a lot longer so we can, uh, do the people's business, if you know what I mean."

So far, legislative efforts to roll back term limits at the city and state level have almost all failed, perhaps most notably in New York, where a City Council committee decided in March to kill a bill that would have overturned their own term limits. Those limits were approved by voters in 1993 and reaffirmed in a 1996 ballot measure.

Still, some term-limits laws, including those in Massachusetts and Washington state, have been thrown out by state courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that term limits for members of Congress would require a constitutional amendment. Efforts to get that amendment approved by Congress have fallen short of the mark.

In other ways, the movement seems to have stalled in part because flush economic times for much of the '90s cooled voters' anger with politicians, and in part because the people who rode to office on the strength of the idea are coming up against the consequences. Only Nebraska has passed a term-limits law in the last six years.

Last fall, Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Wash.) easily won re-election to Congress despite breaking the term-limits pledge that put him at the forefront of the movement. He unseated the incumbent speaker of the House in the Republican tide of 1994, largely because he promised to serve no more than three two-year terms.

What Oregon is considering involves not slowing the term-limits movement but reversing it. And term-limits proponents are confident that voters will recoil at such proposals.

"Once voters find out what the legislators are doing, there will be a political firestorm the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time," said Paul Jacob, the national director of U.S. Term Limits, an advocacy group based in Washington.

The maneuvering in Oregon is complicated, so much so that it is possible the two houses of the Legislature will not be able to agree on exactly what to ask voters, or when.